The Key

Chapter 18

“Yeah, looked like what you described as angel mail,” Prince Dan replies. Almost casually, he flips the clasp on the box and lifts the lid. “Whoever sent it, it must have been some important message for demons to waylay it that hard. No idea about the writing, though. A couple of the symbols look almost like the warding on the boxes. I’m thinking… Cas?”

The stone is dark, the carvings light. The script small and angular, funneled down columns. The incantation. The power forged between three archangels, a feat now beyond replicating.

Casper hears Dan speaking without hearing him.

This is it.

Directly before him, lying in a box he cannot touch nor remove objects from. It’s here.

It’s right here.

A hand touches Casper’s shoulder. It squeezes harder than Casper has grown to expect it to.

Casper looks at Prince Dan and Prince Dan looks back and the tablet is still right there .

“So what do you think?” Prince Dan asks. His grin is soft, his eyes concerned but lovely.

Casper thinks:

He needs Dan to take it out of the box.

And:

If the demons had it, they would have used it; why didn’t they use it?

There must be a mistake in the castle records.

Dan will take it out of the box for him.

His mission is complete.

His mission is complete once it’s out of the box.

And in his hands.

And the portal opens in several hours.

Casper needs it out of the box, in his hands, by the portal, in several hours.

How many hours?

What time is it?

Aloud, he says, “This is more than I’d dared hope for. Dan, I. Can I.”

No, he’s not meant to hold it, skin to stone. The excuse of the gloves needs to continue.

He formulates a plan:

He must find a pretense for Dan to move the tablet to sit directly on the table.

He will ask Dan to get him gloves as well.

While Dan is turned away, or possibly even absent from the room entirely, Casper will take the tablet and tuck it under his belt and wings, holding it there.

He will leave the castle under the threat of immediate discovery. Being presumed human, the means used to stop him will all prove ineffectual. The timing of the portal will make his return difficult, or will at least fill the hours until that return with conflict and avoidable bloodshed. He can avoid most by taking to the sky once outside, but there will certainly be some.

They will break free of their banishment into a world that sees them as aggressors and thieves, and this will be Casper’s doing.

“Can you what?” Dan asks.

“I don’t know where to start,” Casper confesses.

That is a bad plan. He has no doubt Raphael would consider them acceptable human casualties in the name of their escape, but that is nevertheless a bad plan.

He formulates a new plan, which is to bide time to make a better plan.

“Can I see the provenance?” Casper asks.

“Yeah, it’s in the logbook,” Dan says. “It’s marked with the, uh. Green ribbon, yeah.”

Nodding, Casper does the impossible and steps away from the tablet. They both go to the immense tome, and Prince Dan helps him open it in the belief that this book is very heavy.

“See, it’s this lot here,” Prince Dan tells him, running his finger under the appropriate line of half-faded handwriting. “Listed by year, stronghold, sets of items, and descriptions of items.”

Unless a mistake of colossal stupidity occurred in the documentation, this is correct. Both blade and tablet were in the possession of demons, and yet both went unused.

The tablet could have unleashed their full forces. All it required was sending the tablet to that realm of banishment. Could they somehow not find the way? To go unused, that isn’t inaction. That is inability. It has to be. None of it makes any sense, but that is the only reasonable answer.

Demons can create portals, and did so during the war with devastating results. They did so for much lower stakes than unleashing the vast majority of their army, as well as returning Lucifer himself to their world. Surely they could have managed this, and yet, somehow, they hadn’t.

The blade makes even less sense. Forged of the grace of an archangel, it can harm any creature, of any magical strength. Surely its usefulness would be blindingly obvious. Demons never hesitated in claiming and using the blades of deceased angels during the war, one of the reasons so few mementos of their fallen comrades remain: common practice had changed to recalling their blades inside their bodies before death in order to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Even if they thought it only the blade of an ordinary angel, it would be a prized weapon, and wielded by any demon of high stature who wished to flaunt that status. Why the warded box instead? Why warded against angels when the demons know the angels are gone?

“Got a theory to share with the class, Cas?”

“Not yet,” Casper answers, eyes narrowed at the graying ink on the page.

These are questions for later, he decides. Procuring the tablet comes before all else.

“I’d like to take notes,” Casper tells Prince Dan, stalling for time to formulate a better plan. “Would you mind being ignored for a short while?”

“Kinda figured that was where tonight was going,” Prince Dan replies with a small sigh. “Knock yourself out, man.”

“Thank you,” Casper says, and he has never meant anything more.

He starts with the pretense of copying. It’s busywork, an excuse to think. The symbols are familiar, the make of the pen less so. He explains his slow progress by continually looking between tablet and paper, going so far as to estimate the size of some sigils against the length of his thumb. He writes and he thinks.

Until now, reaching his goal has been more important than concern for collateral damage. With it in reach, it’s time to consider.

Outright theft tonight will lead to disastrous relations between their peoples. The tablet’s absence will be noticed immediately. His skill with illusions is poor and his grace cannot touch the box, not even to create the image of a tablet inside it. Perhaps he could find a means of creating a physical copy in the seventeen hours he will have back in their realm, but this strategy requires that he return down here tomorrow night, which he may not be able to contrive.

Provided he did manage the switch, and that is a gamble he would prefer not to make, the truth of his deception would readily become clear once the sky cracks open and his people return. Even if the humans didn’t notice the tablet had been replaced, Prince Dan is pragmatic enough to put the events together once confronted with the undeniable reality of angels. And once inquiries are made at Seer Shurley’s university, Prince Dan will learn that no human named Casper has ever worked there.

It occurs to Casper now that nothing can keep his deception hidden.

It’s something obvious, something he knows, and something he has not permitted himself to think about.

He looks at Prince Dan and, watching him idly trace the warding on the blade’s box, he understands why.

Prince Dan will know, the kingdom will know, and the kingdom will think Prince Dan a fool.

Casper has done this.

No.

Casper is doing this.

It’s unavoidable now, and so Casper does not seek to avoid it.

He copies the tablet in full, his writing small and cramped though legible. Below, he copies the first symbol again and begins to write variations of translation in the only human script he’s practiced. The magic of his being gifts him the secrets of languages only so far. He takes care to write the words from left to right, rather than list them downward as it makes sense to do.

“What’re you doing?” Prince Dan asks, looking over his shoulder. They sit in armless chairs, Casper sideways with the chair’s back on his left. Prince Dan sits on his right.

“This was the language at the time,” Casper tells him. He points to the drying ink. “This one could mean a wide variety of things based on context and position. At the top of the column, it has–”

“No, I mean,” Prince Dan interrupts, “your writing is painfully tiny. We do have more paper.” He pats the small stack of it for emphasis. It must be some ten or fifteen pages, each sheet thick and crisp and pristine.

Casper looks between the stack, his notes, and Prince Dan in turn. These notes are unnecessary other than as a bid for time and a commitment to his role. He is already wasting paper, to say nothing of ink. Just this much is already more than Casper has used in over six hundred years.

To be absolutely certain, he asks, “I could use… all of it?” It’s a ridiculous question.

“Uh, yeah,” Prince Dan says, which is an even more ridiculous answer. “I mean, if you’re going to be at it that long, I guess I should have brought a book along, but yeah.”

Casper stares at him.

Prince Dan looks uncomfortable. “Dude, it’s just paper.”

Casper keeps staring. He makes himself say, “Thank you.”

After a minute or so of watching Casper write, Prince Dan asks, “How underfunded are you?”

“Very,” Casper answers without looking up. He’s too busy thinking and certainly too intent on ignoring the way Dan keeps playing with his wings. The human lifts individual feathers before smoothing them back down, and it’s enough to slowly drive an angel mad.

“You don’t have enough for paper?”

Casper does look up at that, mostly because the petting has stopped, Dan’s fingers going still against his wing. “We make do.”

“‘We’? Finding it hard to believe Chuck is in that much financial hardship,” Prince Dan says, skepticism plain in his voice.

“Seer Shurley and I have different degrees of access to resources,” Casper replies. “But this project is primarily mine. He’s not contributing financially, nor have I asked him to.”

Prince Dan shakes his head. “Seriously, Cas, once you finish this thing up, I’m telling you: Men of Letters. We give our support staff the support they need back.”

“Perhaps,” Casper says. Then he pulls another sheet of paper toward him and asks, “Would you turn the tablet over, please? I want to see if there’s anything to transcribe on the back.”

Carefully, Prince Dan lifts the tablet from the warded box. He holds it in his hands, well within Casper’s reach. He turns it over, and Casper could take it from him with ease.

The moment hangs in the air.

It passes.

Prince Dan returns the tablet to the box, the underside now revealed, and Casper sits with pen in hand, having done nothing.

Casper could ask him to turn it over again. That possibility still very much exists. Casper could smudge the ink, still wet, on his first page of notes, and that would be excuse enough. It would lead to a blatant theft with immediate consequences, but it is still very much possible.

He needs to find another way. When the inevitable look of betrayal crosses Dan’s features, Casper must be somewhere very far away.

His chest is tight. The muscles of his wings are tighter. Dan touches his right wing, low, fingers wrapping around an individual flight feather. The contact is furtive, the grip loose. The intent is reverent. It’s too much.

Casper looks sharply, as if having just noticed. Dan looks back at him, his hand very much still around the vane of his flight feather.

“It looked soft,” Dan says, as if this is a valid excuse.

“Dan,” Casper says.

“You know, I think this is a good compromise on me keeping my hands to myself.” Even while relaying that deeply flawed argument, Dan lets go.

“Concentrating is already very difficult,” Casper tells him.

Dan’s head lifts up, as if making it only halfway through a nod.

Casper tilts his head in a question.

“This is what you’ve been looking for, right?” Dan asks, and Casper does not flinch or blink or react. “You find a way to verify the authenticity here and there you go, solid proof of angels existing. That whole banishment theory of yours gets a lot more weight.”

When Dan seems to expect some sort of answer, Casper replies, “Yes?”

“I just thought you’d be happier, that’s all,” Dan says, and there is something small in his voice Casper cannot withstand.

He sets down the pen and takes Dan’s hand and hates his gloves and says, “I haven’t thanked you. That was remiss of me.”

“Cas, that’s not what I’m–” Dan shakes his head. He looks at Casper in a way Casper doesn’t understand, but would like to. “I thought you’d be relieved. You had ridiculous expectations hanging over your head, research at a party, but you fulfilled them.” He gestures at the items on the table with the hand not in Casper’s. “Seriously, did your patron think you were going to pull something this significant out of your ass?”

“Not out of that specific cavity, no,” Casper replies.

Dan grins. “So you’re doing great. C’mon, man, you get to relax now.”

“I need to finish transcribing this first.”

“It’s here, and it’s not going anywhere,” Dan reassures him, which is the opposite of reassuring. “Look, a finding this big, you’ve got an excuse to stick around longer. We’ve got two more nights for this party, if you count tonight, and then no one’s gonna mind if you’re down here for a week while everyone else is running around doing wedding prep.”

“Dan, I’ve already told you I can’t stay.” It would be ample time to plan, but it would strip away his excuse for his wings. He could attempt to conceal them with illusions, but he has no faith in his abilities and every certainty of Dan seeking to touch him further. Visible, decorative wings are one thing; invisible yet tangible wings are another. Beyond this, the sheer amount of energy that goes into opening each portal for him is immense. They’ve already opened more portals this year than they usually attempt in a decade, and the exhaustion has begun to show. “Lodging and transport is already arranged.”

“You telling me this doesn’t change anything?” Dan asks, and Casper knows what to do. He sees the answer. He sees each verbal step required to disarm and pin his opponent.

He begins the attack by jerking his head back. He looks to the boxes, to Dan, without turning his head. Despite being the one holding on, he begins to withdraw his hand.

He asks, “Is this a bribe?”

Dan pulls back his own hand. “What? No. Why would you–”

“I’m well aware His Majesty seeks to buy my cooperation and silence,” Casper interrupts, pressing forward.

“I’m not my father,” Dan tells him, drawing up.

“I know, which is why I am asking,” Casper hastens to say. “Many think a poor man is easily bought.”

“Cas, I’m not trying to buy you. I’m–”

“You want me to break promises I have already made to those who trust me,” Casper states, speaking as calmly as possible in the face of Dan’s protests. “I have to go home after tomorrow night. That’s non-negotiable. As much as I–” He cuts himself off, a verbal feint. “That’s non-negotiable. Even for you.”

“As much as you what?” Dan asks, taking the bait. He leans forward in his seat. His fingertips touch the side of Casper’s leg. “You want to stay.”

“I can’t.”

“But you want to.”

“Yes.” In this world, with skies and wind and music and dancing. With Dan. “I want more than five nights with you.”

Dan’s hand shifts fully atop Casper’s thigh, and Casper covers it with his own. “We’re gonna get more than five, Cas. Yeah, maybe Dad’s trying to put a leash on you, but that Man of Letters position is real and waiting for you. You can live here, in the capital, and afford all the f*****g paper you need. Even if we don’t work out, you have that. That’s yours, you earned it with Sam.

“And, yeah, I’m gone a lot, there’s patrols and s**t. I’m heading out on one after Sammy’s wedding, even, but I always come back. We can have all the nights you want. Days, too. In between, you could have all the research time you can stand, check out all the other unidentified crap we have here. I know it’s not angels, but it’s good work, and we could be together.”

Casper squeezes his hand. “Before I consider that, I need to finish my current project. I’m bound to it.”

“I’m not telling you to quit, Cas,” Dan assures him. “I’m just asking you to switch, after.”

Casper rubs his thumb over leather, a poor substitute for skin. Using his feet, he shifts the chair slightly, the wooden legs scraping against the stone floor. The side of his left wing digs into the chair back and the chair back taps against the edge of the table, but he does manage to better sit facing Dan. “If I’m to finish this, I need to dedicate as much time as I can to studying the tablet, so I can return home with as complete a set of notes as possible. The speed with which I finish is dependent on that. I don’t want to neglect you tonight or tomorrow, but, as I told you, I didn’t come here to socialize.”

“Kinda thought you’d rather be researching anyway,” Dan remarks, cavalier, almost dismissive in tone. He leans too far forward for it to be true. He watches Casper too intently.

“I’d thought so, too,” Casper says, and he slips his thumb between Dan’s palm and his own thigh. “I’m… unnerved by what my priorities have become.”

“Would you rather be dancing with me upstairs?” Dan asks, his eyes intent, his voice steady.

Casper lowers his eyes and, with great effort, manages to smile with only his mouth at the thought. At the memories. He lifts his gaze back to Dan’s face and says, “Yes. But I– There’s no sense in repeating myself, least of all for being limited for time.”

“Have you never heard of asking for help?” Dan asks him. “That’s not rhetorical. You do know that’s a thing you can do, right?”

Casper frowns, using his mouth as well as his forehead. “Dan?”

“We can transfer it to the university, you dumbass,” Dan tells him. “What kind of genius are you?”

Casper looks from Dan to the tablet. He thinks of Dan’s generosity with the paper and tries to let the same uncomprehending surprise fill his body. He looks back to Dan, and Dan is smiling.

“You’d do that?” Casper asks, as if this wasn’t the precise offer he’d herded Dan towards.

“Yeah, I’d do that,” Dan says, and this is Casper’s victory. It does not feel like victory, but perhaps that will come in time. When his people are free, surely Casper will be happy.

“Thank you,” Casper says. “Dan, I–”

Dan holds up his free hand, his palm toward Casper. “It’s not a bribe. It’s not me buying you. If I can help, I do. That’s how this works. So finish up your notes, get whatever you need to tide you over for a week or two until delivery day, and then we can go upstairs and have some fun. All right?”

“I’m going to kiss you first,” Casper decides. It is not a decision he makes. It is a decision that simply happens.

“I take it back, you’re still a genius,” Dan says.

He leans forward and Casper leans forward, and then Dan stands and tugs at his sleeve, and Casper stands. Their chairs scrape back behind them. His flight feathers pull across the seat. Dan’s hand cups his cheek and lifts his face. Casper’s arms slide around Dan’s waist and hold him as close as dancing. Casper closes his eyes and lifts his chin higher. He feels Dan’s breath before he feels his lips, and they are impossibly softer, impossibly warmer than that already warm air.

Casper presses back. With his mouth. With his hands. With a full-bodied lean up into Dan. Two hands frame his face now. Two hands guide him to tilt his head, to hold still for more motions of a mouth against his. It is soft and firm and made of the gentleness born of restraint.

Dan tilts his face downward, toward Casper, their foreheads touching, their noses brushing. Their mouths part. Casper presses up, begins to press up, and ultimately obeys the guiding pressure of Dan’s hands.

“Relax,” Dan whispers between them. One of his hands shifts from Casper’s face to his hair. “We got time, Cas.”

They don’t.

“Then use it to kiss me,” Casper instructs.

Dan does.

He draws back again to repeat, “Seriously, relax.”

Casper can’t.

He keeps his wings still. He keeps his strength in check. He aligns his breathing to Dan’s, having no concept of how heavily he ought to be breathing. He holds Dan by the waist, thumbs hooked into his belt on either side, tethering him in place. He moves his mouth in the small motions Dan shows him, strange pinches and pulls using only the lips.

When he feels a sudden touch of wetness, it takes him a moment to understand. He parts his lips and loosens his jaw to touch tongue to tongue, but Dan breaks the kiss to murmur, “Yeah, like that,” against Casper’s mouth. Dan strokes his cheek with a gloved hand, and Casper can no longer stand it.

He lifts one hand from Dan’s waist to better catch the hand against his face. He draws it down between their chests and uses both his hands to strip off the offending piece of clothing.

Dan huffs a laugh against Casper’s lips. “Don’t like my gloves, huh?” He kisses the corner of Casper’s mouth while offering his other hand.

“I hate them very much,” Casper answers, and Dan laughs again.

Returning a hand to Casper’s hair, Dan scrapes his fingernails against Casper’s scalp. Casper leans into the touch, eyes falling closed, mouth falling open. His wings flex, and Casper catches at Dan’s unoccupied hand to ensure he won’t reach back and feel the strain in those muscles.

Dan’s kisses rove from his mouth to his cheek, his jaw. “You don’t like how leather feels?” He guides Casper’s hands back to his own body, and tactics war against temptation.

“It doesn’t feel like you,” Casper explains. He digs both thumbs into Dan’s palm in appreciation. The kiss pressed against his jawline presses even harder, and Casper turns his head to catch it. Their mouths find each other, and it’s much easier with his jaw relaxed. So that’s what Dan meant.

This time when Dan touches Casper’s lips with his tongue, Casper better knows what to do. He touches tongue to tongue, and there is flavor, sudden and wet and strange. But then Dan withdraws, only to return when Casper doesn’t pursue. Casper gives chase the second time, his tongue touching lips and teeth and tongue again.

Dan tastes human. Though lacking all other descriptors, Casper knows this much. As Dan’s tongue moves against his, he fears that this of all things will be the moment of his discovery, that surely Dan must know what humans taste like and recognize Casper as other, but the moment stretches and stretches without ever shattering. Perhaps Dan accepts Casper’s taste as readily as he accepts his scent. Casper cradles Dan’s hand against his chest, holding on.

Pressing closer, Dan tilts his head and holds Casper where he wants him. Their mouths open wider, lips sliding. Fast then slow, smooth then flicking, Dan plays his tongue against Casper’s as if searching for something, seeking some reaction beyond sheer over-stimulation. Just what he’s after, Casper doesn’t understand, not until Dan’s lips tighten and he pulls at Casper’s tongue with all his mouth.

A deep groan rumbles out of Casper’s throat. His hands fly to Dan’s shoulders, to his back, to his nape. He presses closer and Dan stumbles back a step, catching himself with one hand on the table, one hand still on the back of Casper’s head. Their mouths do not part. Their mouths cannot be permitted to part.

Dan sucks at him again, firm and slow and constant, drawing him into the heat of his mouth. Casper is inside him. Not with his hands, forcing viscera back into a wound. Not with his grace, mending with healing or slicing as his blade. He is within Dan, not for violence or to repair from violence, but for the mere sensation of it. For the consuming joy of closeness.

Tongue flicking lightly at Casper even as he sucks, Dan pulls another deep noise out of Casper and into his own mouth. Anything Dan does resulting in that noise, Dan does again. He finds variations. He teases. He hums with pleasure when Casper endeavors to cut his teasing short.

Dan breathes heavily through his nose, and Casper copies. Dan’s chest rises and falls with a thrumming heart, and Casper copies. Dan cups his nape and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, and Casper copies, every last inch.

Pulling back for a moment is a moment too long, but Dan does it anyway. He tilts his head in the opposite direction and readily allows Casper to draw him back in. This time, Casper opens his mouth. Dan enters him in turn, warm and wet and seeking.

His hands roam Dan’s back, the barren yet unblemished expanse of it. Beneath cloth, there is skin and musculature and bone, and beneath that, within Casper’s arms, there is Dan himself. Casper performs the same sampling method Dan had used on him, motions of mouth and tongue. He finds that Dan prefers teasing. Dan prefers slowing almost to a stop before resuming with a snap of need. Dan prefers a great many things, and Casper seeks them out in passionate diligence until Dan’s hand leaves his hair for his wings.

Those fingers close. They clench. They fist in his scapular feathers. Casper halts their endless kissing to rasp, “Don’t.”

“Need to hold onto you,” Dan answers, sounding like dizziness itself.

“Here.” He tugs at Dan’s elbow, pulls at his forearm, and presses Dan’s hand against his upper torso. He pulls at Dan’s other arm, bringing each of Dan’s hands to mirror the other, and he wraps his own arms around Dan’s back to trap him in place. The position makes it seem as if Dan is about to push him away, and it fails to satisfy until Dan grips his shoulders hard, thumbs dipping over Casper’s clavicles.

“Not normally the one being held,” Dan murmurs. He looks down at Casper, eyes dark and hazy. His mouth is red and wet and somehow plumper than Casper has ever seen it.

“Let me,” Casper asks.

“f**k yes,” Dan answers, nuzzling closer. They press kisses to each other’s mouths, each a breathless little thing despite all the air in the room. Then Dan leans down and draws Casper’s bottom lip between his own, between his teeth, and this is yet another new variation. How many ways are there?

With another groan, Casper pulls back enough to say, “Show me.”